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add an Ekby Alex drawer set to your Ikea Jerker desktop

Designed as a standalone shelf, the Ekby Alex drawer unit can make a very, very useful addition to an Ikea Jerker (version 2) desk.

Official Ikea Jerker drawers are pretty hard to come by, in part because they were an optional item, in part because they’re were not designed to be paired with for ⅔rds of the Jerker desk designs.

But, the Ekby Alex drawer shelf just so happens, and believe me I was very excited when I found out, to fit absolutely perfectly between the legs of an Ikea Jerker (version 2) desk. You could place one of these units on a top shelf, but the fact is, even if you use it where it is most hand, on the desktop, it still leaves you with lots of desk-space for keyboard, mouse, joystick, and similar peripherals.

The Alex Ekby comes in one long box. It’s actually manageable to carry out of the store, but is a bit heavy, weighing 12kg (27lbs). The build time is about a half-hour. In addition to the parts an pieces in the box you’ll also need a hammer (the back is assembled with about thirty little nails), a flathead screwdriver and a Phillips head screwdriver.

Here’s a video showing the whole build process:

As mentioned in the video, be sure to note the sizes of the connector pieces, in my build I didn’t at first distinguish between them and it took a bit of time to straighten my mess out.

Once together, I found the Alex Ekby to be a very sturdy little shelf drawer set.

One other point to bear in mind, the drawers only pull out slightly more than half way; but the insides of the two drawers have plenty of space: The horizontal space measures, front to back 24cm (9.5 inches) and 54cm (21.25 inches) from side to side. And the depth is a mere 5.75cm (2.5 inches). One drawer will fit one ream of printer paper and dozens of pens pencils, erasers, a couple of pairs of scissors and a stapler. But most tape guns, office sized tape dispensers, and three hole punchers will not fit in these drawers.

Here are photos of mine in use.

And, for those Jerker owners don’t have enough top shelves, or just want to be different, you can also use the Alex Ekby (or two?) as a monitor riser. The Alex Ekby is rated to support 22kg (44 lbs) and each would raise your monitor by 11.5cm (4.5 inches).

Separately, I’m wondering if it would be possible to make a similarly-configurable desk with suitable hollow structural section, welded into two Ts. The metal crosspieces could be bent out of sheet steel by any metal fabricating shop, but just using more HSS might be easier. You would then need your bolts, simple L-brackets to go between shelf and upright, adjustable feet (easy to buy) and boards to make the shelves. Ikea sells plain melamine-covered particle board in a remarkable variety of dimensions for people building kitchens, but you have to call them as they do not publish what sizes they have. You can also buy melamine edge tape, if you have to cut a sheet down. Most hardware stores will have melamine sheet and edge tape.

So the question is, does anyone sell suitable HSS? Ideally pre-drilled. Hey, one could build an Ikea Jerker bookcase, or raised/bunk bed, or almost anything. If your store stocked it…

I actually have a Jerker bookshelf, mostly made out 2 (version 1) big lower shelves (in Birch), (5 version 1) topshelves (in Birch), 2 extensions on each leg, but, I beleive I stwitched the legs themselves to version 2 (because they stick out less than version 1s).